Doctor update...

Benjamin saw his urologist this morning and we discussed Benjamin's upcoming surgery. The urologist is planning to talk with Benjamin's nephrologist and his GI to see if they think Benjamin is ready for surgery (i.e. his growth is good and his labs are stable). Assuming he gets the go ahead from them, we will start looking at dates around the beginning of the year. The surgery will be fairly lengthy, 5-6 hours, and will require a 3-5 day hospital stay. He plans to perform some repairs to Benjamin's ureters and then reimplant them on Benjamin's bladder. This will allow him to close 2 of the 4 holes on Benjamin's tummy. Over the following months, there will be various tests similar to tests Benjamin did when he was very little to make sure the repair is working as expected. We do feel Benjamin is in the best of hands with his urologist and are very confident in his abilities. It is scary and exciting that we can begin the process of normalizing Benjamin's system as much as possible. We'll update more as we hear more from the doctor. Hopefully, we'll hear more sometime next week.

I forgot to update previously about Benjamin's speech therapy evaluation. The therapist said exactly what we expected. Benjamin is at or above age level on his receptive language (how he understands language) and behind age level on his expressive language (his spoken language). He clearly understands much of what we say to him as he follows directions, responds to his name, etc. (i.e. when Sean is getting ready in the morning, he asks Benjamin to get Daddy's socks and Benjamin troops off to the sock drawer) He is behind on forming words though. She said this is very common with children who have other health issues and also is likely due to his underdeveloped mouth muscles from not eating. We'll be working with her to strengthen his mouth and to encourage words. She was very pleased with the way he babbles and with his nonverbal skills. Some children are very silent and she says they pose even bigger challenges. The nice thing is that his occupational and speech therapists are at the same location so they can work together to form goals for Benjamin.

Last night we went to a 50s sock hop at the kids' school. They served rootbeer floats and had a costume contest and a hula hoop contest. Emma was so cute. She ran around with 2 new friends from her first grade room and looked happy as could be. Alex mostly bowled at the "bowling" alley and was sorely disappointed that they ran out of hula hoops before he could get one. You should have seen some of the kids do the hula hoops. Ultimately, it was a tie between a boy and a girl who must have kept them going for 10-15 minutes straight. Benjamin was fascinated by the disco ball (I know that's 70s) and kept pointing to the ceiling. Alex did dress up in a white shirt, rolled jeans and slicked back hair. We just needed to add some sideburns!